Ranking Question

MSN & Yahoo vs. Google

[Swebbie]

I've got a site that's now 2 years old. For the past year or so, it has ranked on the first page of SERPs at both MSN and Yahoo for the main keyword, which has about 30,000,000 competitors (the average between all major SEs). But it can't crack even the top 50 at Google. I've got other sites that have shown this same pattern, but they're not as old. Clearly I'm not doing something right here. I read forum posts all the time from members who have comparatively much newer sites that rank on the first couple of pages in Google within a few months or at most a year - even for competitive terms.

I guess what I'm after here is a run-down of common mistakes that might account for top rankings at MSN and Yahoo but not Google. Obviously, I want the site to rank at all three, but I frankly don't know if a first-page ranking at Google would trump the combined power of first-page rankings at the other two, or if I should just disregard Google and be happy with what I have. Even if that's the case, the 'scientist' in me can't stand not knowing what's up here. Any thoughts from others with experiences along these same lines will be greatly appreciated!

[Robert Charlton]

Chances are your inbound links aren't very good. Maybe they're blog links. Maybe they're run of site links. Maybe they're all from related (same network) sites. Low quality inbounds seem to work on MSN and on Yahoo. You'll have a harder time with them on Google.

Long term, I think all of the engines will develop some sort of link quality assessment, and you'll need good inbounds to rank anywhere.

Re market share, yes, Google outperforms all the other engines combined.